Gender-neutral clothes are washed and folded. The car seat is ready. The crib is made.

The couple, who have been married for 30 years and have four grown children, are using their empty-nesting years to help some of the most vulnerable in Indiana's child welfare system.

For the last six years, they've fostered with The Villages, a private nonprofit that works with the Department of Child Services to provide mental, emotional and social support to nearly 800 children across the state each year.

Over that period of time, the Torreses have taken in more than a dozen children, several of them medically fragile, hoping to provide stability and support for youths awaiting adoption.

“People often ask why we’re not foster to adopt, and the reason why we’re not foster to adopt is because … we prepare our children for their forever homes,” Sherri said. “That’s our job in the system.”

Bridging the gap

The Torreses, who describe themselves as “young empty-nesters,” first began thinking about fostering a few years ago following an event at East 91st Street Christian Church.

“We looked at each other and said, ‘Do you think we can do this?’” Sherri remembered.

After doing some research, the couple chose to begin their foster parent training through The Villages. Working with a private agency like theirs comes with certain perks, Ed Torres said, like having a social worker assigned specifically to their family and training and resources that otherwise might not be available to them.

“What you do is incredibly hard,” Ed said. “So, the more resources, the better.”

They didn’t fully appreciate how high the need was for foster parents until they received a call about a brother and sister pair removed from their home by police late one evening. While the Torreses were ready and willing to help, Ed had to tell the person on the other end of the phone that they weren’t yet licensed.

“‘Oh, you were licensed at eight o'clock this morning,’” Ed remembered them saying. “‘You just don't know yet.”

So began their journey as a foster family.

In their six years working with The Villages, the Torres family has worked with 13 foster children — three of them in long-term placements in their home. During that time, they’ve developed a passion for working with those who are medically fragile, having worked with children diagnosed with cerebral palsy and cystic fibrosis, among other things.

“Our last little guy ... the nurses and the doctors approved him to leave the (neonatal intensive care unit) at Week 6,” Ed Torres said. “Nobody would take him because of his medical challenges.”

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Ed and Sherri Torres, foster parents with The Villages of Indiana, are shown here in their Indianapolis home, Thursday, May 2, 2019. The couple have readied a number of children to be adopted. (Photo: Michelle Pemberton/IndyStar)

The couple had to undergo specialized training — including placing a tube for feeding through the nose— before they could take him home.

"When we ... realized the medical stuff didn't bother us at all, that's when we said, OK, this is our niche," Ed Torres said.

'Our natural disaster’

The Villages of Indiana is a private, nonprofit agency that contracts with the Department of Child Services to bridge the gap and improve outcomes for children during their time in the child welfare system.

“Our goal is always that a child will be able to go back to their family of origin,” The Villages CEO Sharon Pierce said. “But if that's not the case, and if you have a good match, if that child feels comfortable, ethnically, culturally, geographically in their foster family, and then needs a new forever family, that makes that opportunity for permanency even better for that child.”

Indiana had nearly 30,000 children in foster care during fiscal year 2016, nearly double the population of the state’s child welfare system just five years prior. The fluctuation in the number of children in out-of-home placements has been attributed in part to the opioid epidemic.

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To help meet that need, The Villages expanded to accommodate an additional 220 placements by 2018, for a total of 789 children.

“This was our natural disaster in Indiana,” she said. “And, so, we were the part of the emergency response team, if you will.”

The Villages uses a blend of funding from the state, donors and grantsto help provide wraparound services for foster children and parents. That includes supplemental funds to help with the cost of necessary expenses such as medical equipment, infant-care items such as diapers and formula and mental health services.

The goal is to create an environment in which both the child and their foster family can thrive.

“In the end, children really belong in families,” Pierce said. “That's why it's so critical that there are resources available that can meet each child's unique needs.”

Different faces of foster care

Not all foster familieslook the same.

Single people can become licensed. So, too, can empty-nesters. Couples with and without children.

There are also ways to help without taking in a long-term placement. Individuals and families can also become licensed to act as “respite” fosters.

For example, if the Torreses were to go out of town for a family wedding and they had a medically fragile placement or a child who shouldn’t travel long-distance, a respite foster could step in and bridge the gap for that weekend.

These families may appear different in their makeup, but the common goal that binds them, Pierce said, is an ongoing desire to make a difference in a child’s life.

Deciding to become a foster family is a big step, not just for that household, but for those around them. Pierce said it’s important for prospective foster parents to have conversations with their entire family as well as friends and neighbors — anyone in their support group — about their decision to foster.

“We want everyone with whom they come in contact, you know, whether that's extended family members, or faith community members or neighbors,” Pierce said, “to embrace that child and the unique potential and value that they have.”

‘They deserve it’

The Torreses are not shy about how difficult it is to be a foster parent. Adding a new child to the mix can be hard on a marriage. Helping a child navigate trauma can be traumatic in itself, but the couple have never wanted their own feelings to come first.

“When we got the first two, they would tell us something, and we knew we both had to cry,” Ed Torres said. “And we would look at each other and we would have a little wink signal about who had to cry most. ... Because we didn’t want to cry in front of them, because they finally felt safe.”

And watching the progress as these kids regain their sense of safety and come out of their shells and realize that there’s life beyond the trauma they may have previously experienced is beyond rewarding, hesaid.

Seeing a young boy regain trust in the world as he navigated post-traumatic stress disorder. Watching their last little guy learn to use a bottle and a sippy cup. Hearing that the girl who once told them she was going to drop out of high school to work at Taco Bell is now getting all A’s and B’s and dreams of going to college.

Being a foster parent can be stressful, they acknowledge, but knowing that they have the potential to change a child’s life is worth it.

“It makes you realize that there are things that you thought you couldn’t do,” Sherri said, “(that) you could do.”

Ed chimed in in agreement.

“Because they deserve it."

May is National Foster Care month. To learn more about Indiana Department of Child Services requirements to become a foster parent, visit in.gov/dcs/fostercare.htm. To learn more about The Villages, visit villageskids.org.